- Self-renunciation: a focus beyond oneself.
- The practice (habit) of prayer (broadly defined).
- The practice of attention (cf Simone Weil): listening, observing, attending to.
- To be a trustworthy person: avoid gossip, never bear false witness, let others speak for themselves (and help them in this), to keep others’ secrets, when entrusted with them.
- Economy of speech; chose words thoughtfully, be not a prattler, or verbose, long winded &c.
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Good things:
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What L P Hartley should have said: “The present is a foreign country. They do things differently here”. I have felt like this most of my adult life, being of an (outgoing) introverted, ironical bent. But it seems ever truer. The idiocy, self-aggrandisement, madness of the age is there to be seen in all its silliness, now amplified by the internet and social media. The good news is that I am far less distressed or distracted by it than before. The result of an interior detachment that also gets stronger, and which feels good. Another take on Nicólas Gómez Dávila’s “When nothing in society deserves respect, we should fashion for ourselves in solitude new silent loyalties.”
S and I to Swanage on the Dorset Coast for a few days. The pier allows people to attach remembrances to the deck planks. Thousands upon thousands of them. Some trite, some funny, some moving, all significant to someone or other. This one caught my eye. I've always felt well-disposed to anyone called Queenie, and I am temperamentally drawn to brevity and understatement. One really imagines that they were best mates. Also spotted in Swanage. A town on a mission. The Friends of religion and good order are best given a wide berth. They like to make trouble for other folk.
William McCrossan (aka Liturgical William of Bow) "There is a deep instability which should be the mark of the authentic Christian: for here we have no continuing city, but we seek one to come. Apart from other considerations, the acceptance of Baptism is the sign of a profound instability because Baptism is a death unto sin, and a new birth unto righteousness and it requires a renunciation of the vain pomp and glory of the world, with all covetous desires of the same." Unpublished autobiographical essays. |
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